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Tuesday, June 3, 2008

He's a Stud, She's a Slut: On Men's Relationship to the Feminine

This article is more about the experience of women than men, but many men have a role in the double standard the author is talking about. More below -- this post is probably going someplace other than where you might expect (I'm just using this article as a jumping off point, though it is interesting in its own way).

If you have a vagina, chances are someone has called you a slut at least once in your life. There's just no getting around it.

I remember the first time I heard the word "slut" -- I was in my fifth-grade science class. A certain little girl (terror) named Eleena had been making my life miserable all year in a way that only mean little girls can. She had turned all my girlfriends against me, spread rumors and the like. She walked up to me at my desk and said, "You called me a slut." I had absolutely no idea what the word meant. I just sat there, silently. She repeated herself: "You called me a slut, but you're the slut." I don't remember how long after that I found out exactly what "slut" meant, but I knew it had to be terrible and I knew I didn't want to be it.

Naturally, I'd be called a slut many times over later in life -- not unlike most girls. I was called a slut when my boobs grew faster than others'. I was called a slut when I had a boyfriend (even though we weren't having sex.) I was called a slut when I didn't have a boyfriend and kissed a random boy at a party. I was called a slut when I had the nerve to talk about sex. I was called a slut when I wore a bikini on a weekend trip with high school friends. It seems the word slut can be applied to any activity that doesn't include knitting, praying, or sitting perfectly still lest any sudden movements be deemed whorish.

Despite the ubiquity of "slut," where you won't hear it is in relation to men. Men can't be sluts. Sure, someone will occasionally call a guy "a dog," but men simply aren't judged like women are when it comes to sexuality. (And if they are, they're judged in a positive way!) Men who have a lot of sexual partners are studs, Casanovas, pimps, and players. Never sluts. In fact, when I just did a Google search for "male sluts," the first result I got was She Male Sluts DVD! I know, should have seen that coming. The point is, there isn't even a word -- let alone a concept -- to signify a male slut.

But it makes sense when you think about what the purpose of the word "slut" is: controlling women through shame and humiliation. Women's bodies are always the ones that are being vied over for control -- whether it's rape, reproductive rights, or violence against women, it's our bodies that are the battleground, not men's.

And if you don't think it's about control, consider this little bit of weirdness. The most recent incarnation of the sexual double standard being played out in a seriously creepy way is through Purity Balls. These promlike events basically have fathers take their daughters to a big fancy dance where they promise their daddy their virginity. Likewise, the father promises to be the "keeper" of his daughter's virginity until he decides to give it to her future husband. Where are the Purity Balls for men, you ask? Oh, they're there, but they're about controlling women too! Called Integrity Balls, these events focus on men not having sex because they'd be defiling someone else's "future wife"! Not because men need to be pure or be virgins -- but because they need to make sure women are virgins. Unbelievable, really.

Outside of the feminist implications of the sexual double standard, the slut/stud conundrum has always been my favorite because it just makes no sense logically. Why is a woman less of a person, or (my favorite) "dirty," because she has sex? (Heterosexual sex, that is; somehow lesbian sex isn't "real.") Does a penis have some bizarre dirtymaking power that I'm unaware of? Every time I have sex, do I lose a bit of my moral compass? "Sorry to mug you, Grandma, but I had sex twice this week!"

And let's face it -- the slut stigma isn't just dangerous to our "reputations" or to some weird-ass notion of purity. How many times has rape been discounted because a woman was deemed a slut? How many times are women called whores while their partners beat them? How often are women's sexual histories used against them in workplace harassment cases? The sexual double standard is a lot more dangerous than we'd like to think.

The sexist element of all this is clear enough -- if you are a man, in America, you most likely have called a woman (or girl) a slut at some point. I have, and I have seen the impact it can have on a girl (my sister) and on women (girlfriends), especially when other women use the word. There's nothing men can do about how women treat each other, but there is a lot we can do about how we treat women.

Obviously, the main point is don't do it -- it's hurtful and completely without merit of any kind. Women have enough issues in this culture without men disrespecting them for having bodies and desires. Damn, we should be thrilled that women enjoy sex as much as we do. And for the "pimps and players," you should be doubly thrilled that some women don't want relationships with the men they sleep with.

But that isn't why I think this is an issue for men to consider. The above article is really just a way into a larger issue for men that I think seldom is mentioned, let alone discussed seriously.

Here's the point: How we treat women reflects our relationship to our own inner feminine.

Carl Jung was the first psychologist to look deeply at the contrasexual archetypes in his clients and develop a theory to account for them. Here is a brief summary of his view of the anima (the feminine archetype in men):

Jung believed anima development has four distinct levels, which he named Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia. In broad terms, the entire process of anima development in a male is about the male subject opening up to emotionality, and in that way a broader spirituality by creating a new conscious paradigm that includes intuitive processes, creativity and imagination, and psychic sensitivity towards himself and others where it might not have existed previously.

Clearly, based on this simple definition, the inner feminine in men is crucial to our emotional and spiritual health. The anima develops throughout our lives, but it is founded in our relationship to our mothers in the first few years of life. In most men, the anima can be seen as a separate self, a subpersonality that exists in the psyche and helps shape the function and expression of the ego.

[As an aside, if the relationship with the mother isn't properly resolved during maturation, the anima and the mother archetype get mixed up in a "mother complex," which has become a cliche in our culture, but is a valid issue for many men.]

Most men have not integrated their inner feminine into their self-concept. As a result, the feminine in most men resides in the shadow, that part of the psyche that holds all the elements of our experience that are repressed or not yet conscious (both good and bad).

According to Sigmund Freud, projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else. It is a common process that every person uses to some degree.[3]

To understand the process, consider a person in a couple who has thoughts of infidelity. Instead of dealing with these undesirable thoughts consciously, he or she subconsciously projects these feelings onto the other person, and begins to think that the other has thoughts of infidelity and may be having an affair. In this sense, projection is related to denial, arguably the only defense mechanism that is more primitive than projection. Those who project deny a part of themselves that may otherwise come to the surface. In this case, they cannot face their own feelings of infidelity and therefore project them onto the other person.

Jung more fully developed projection to include not just "undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings," but anything that is unconscious or residing in shadow. Most often, as Hal and Sidra Stone discuss in their various books, we project our "disowned selves" (subpersonalities that have not entered conscious awareness or have not been integrated).

One of those disowned selves for most men is a subpersonality associated with the anima. This self is our connection to our emotions, our intuition, and sometimes our bodies (not in a fitness sense, but in a body-consciousness sense). Since we have not owned and integrated this self, it is projected onto the women in our lives. See where I'm going here?

How we treat the women in our lives (as mother figures, as virgins, as princesses, as whores, and so on) represents our own relationship to our inner feminine. When we treat women badly, that has a direct association on how we treat our own inner feminine.

What are your associations with women? What kinds of words, in general, would you use to describe women? Are you comfortable with women? How you answer those questions will tell you a lot about your relationship to your own inner feminine.

When we call women sluts or whores, or treat them as objects rather than as people, we are disrespecting ourselves as much as we are the women who are the targets of this abusive behavior. We can never be whole and complete people until we integrate the feminine element of our psyche into our self-concept.

When we can do this, we become more intuitive, more grounded in our bodies, more sensitive to the feelings of others, and so on. We are missing a lot in doing being integrated in this way. In fact for Jung, the integration of the anima in men was the single most important element of individuation. It's that important.